We canva.s.sed the neighbors on Lori"s street first, and none reported seeing or hearing anything unusual Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. But a woman in the gray-shingle house told us that a nurse living two doors away on the other side of her had visited Lori on Wednesday morning, blowing our theory that she had been abducted from the casino.
"Are you sure this nurse visited Wednesday morning?" Marco asked.
The neighbor, Mrs. Green, a ferretlike woman who kept blinking her eyes as though they were itchy, said in a loud voice, "It was Wednesday, sugar. Wednesday morning is garbage pickup day. I may be a senior but I"m not senile." She wiggled her hips. It was quite startling. Then she went back to watering pots of newly emerged sweet peas that bordered her patio.
"Do you know the nurse"s name?" I asked, as Marco took out his notebook.
She shut off the hose, casting me an annoyed glance. "It"s Diane."
"Last name?" I persisted.
"Diane the tuna is all I know. That"s how she introduced herself."
"Diane Rotunno?" Marco asked.
"Could be, sugar. I don"t hear so well." She smiled at him, revealing dentures that hadn"t seen a good cleaning in quite a while.
"How did you see Diane visit Lori from your house?" I asked.
She pointed to a sliding gla.s.s door that opened onto her patio. "You see that door? I sit in front of it all morning with my coffeepot and my bagels, watching the birds come to the feeders. It"s more entertaining than those inane morning talk shows, that"s for sure."
She sniffed indignantly and hitched up her blue stretch pants, which were having a hard time staying up on her scrawny frame. The pants matched the blue-and-green-flowered knit top under her white sweater. "Everyone cuts through these yards. Diane and Lori used to go back and forth between their houses all the time. Nowadays, not so much. But Wednesday morning I saw Diane cut across my yard and go right up to Lori"s back door. Then Lori let her inside."
"Are you positive it was Wednesday?" I asked. "Not Tuesday?"
"Do I look like a moron to you?" she shot back, glaring at me, one hand on her hip.
Okay, I was done asking her questions.
"How long did Diane stay?" Marco asked.
Naturally, Mrs. Green wasn"t as harsh with Marco. "Now, that I can"t tell you. Phyllis always calls right about that time. Talks my ear off for an hour every morning. Talk, talk, talk, and never says nothin" interesting. I didn"t see Diane leave, is what I"m telling you."
"Do you know if Lori had any visitors Tuesday evening?" Marco asked.
Mrs. Green shook her head. "Can"t help you there, either. Lori"s house was dark when I went to bed. I usually watch the ten o"clock news, then hit the hay."
"Do you know whether Lori went to work on Wednesday?" Marco asked.
"I guess she did. When I walked to the other corner at nine o"clock to wait for the geezer bus, her car wasn"t parked at the curb like it usually is. Next thing I knew, the TV news people were reporting her missing. She was a good neighbor, Lori was."
"How long has Lori lived there?" Marco asked.
She scratched her belly. "Oh, gosh, maybe eight years? She moved in about a year after Diane did. Lots of nurses live around here. I always say if I keel over one day, my husband won"t have to look far for help."
Marco handed her his business card. "If you remember anything else about Lori"s movements on Tuesday or Wednesday, would you give me a call?"
She pinched his cheek. "You bet your sweet behind, sugar." She stuck her tongue out at me, then went back to watering her plants.
"Unpleasant little ferret woman," I said, as we headed toward the sidewalk.
"She"s harmless. Let"s see if Diane"s home-if you"re up to the walk."
I took one hand off the grasp bar of my crutch and showed Marco the impressive callus that had developed on the heel of my palm. "I"m tough. I can do it."
"That"s my girl. I like my women-sorry, woman-tough."
"You"re getting good at those saves, Salvare."
"I get lots of practice."
Diane lived in a tidy tan bungalow with brown shutters. It had a small front yard and a long backyard with a giant weeping willow tree in it. So as not to alarm her, we"d decided I should make the introductions, so I knocked on her front door while Marco waited at my side.
"Diane Rotunno? I"m Abby Knight-from Bloomers Flower Shop."
"Just a minute." Diane opened the door, leaving the chain in place, so all I saw was an eyeball and a slice of blue clothing. "Can I help you?"
"I"m here with a private investigator. We"re talking to people in the neighborhood about Lori Willis"s murder. This is Marco Salvare." I stepped aside so Marco could show her his license.
"I"ve already given a statement to the police," she said.
"Unfortunately, that doesn"t help our investigation," Marco said. "We don"t have access to their files. That"s why we"re hoping you"ll share whatever information you have about Lori with us to help us narrow down our suspect list." He kept his gaze on the eyeball. Even one-eyed, she would surely be susceptible to his charm.
"If you"re a private investigator, who"s your client?" she asked warily.
"I"m not at liberty to say," Marco said.
"It"s not Sebastian Holloway, is it?" she asked.
"No," Marco said. "Not Sebastian Holloway or anyone a.s.sociated with him."
"How do you know Dr. Holloway?" I asked.
"I work at County Hospital. So is Holloway on your list of suspects?"
"I"ll answer your question if you"ll answer ours," Marco said.
The eyeball moved to me, then to my crutches. Apparently deciding I couldn"t do her much harm, she unchained her door and opened it halfway. She had on a blue jogging outfit and was perspiring, as though she"d just been out for a run. She appeared to be in her midforties, brown hair tied back, no makeup, and attractive in a wholesome kind of way. "What do you want to know?"
"Why you asked about Dr. Holloway," Marco said.
"Because if you"re serious investigators, you"d have to be looking at him as a suspect. The police didn"t want to hear what I had to say about him. All they wanted to know was whether Lori was seeing that vampire guy, and if I"d seen him around here."
"And your answers were?" Marco asked.
"No to both questions. That didn"t make them too happy."
"How did the police get your name?"
"They were canva.s.sing everyone in the neighborhood," Diane said.
"Would you tell us what you know about Dr. Holloway?" Marco asked, pulling out his notepad and pen.
She opened the door wider. "You might as well come inside. I have nosy neighbors."
We stood in her foyer because she didn"t ask us to sit.
"Like I said, I work at County. I can"t avoid Holloway."
"I was under the impression that you worked with Lori at Parkview," I said.
"I did for a while. Then I moved back to County."
I was waiting for Marco to pick up on that line of questioning, but instead he moved on.
"Tell us why you think Dr. Holloway should be a suspect," he said.
"Because he hated Lori," Diane replied. "Because I"ve heard him brag that he knows ways to kill people that would never be detected. And because if you dig deeper into his alibi than the police did, you"ll find he was lying."
"Can you be more specific than that?" Marco asked, writing down the information.
"That"s about as specific as I want to be."
"Do you know what Holloway"s alibi is?" I asked.
Diane used a terry-cloth towel to wipe her forehead. "Medical conference in Phoenix."
"He didn"t go?" I asked.
"Oh, he went, all right. But like I said, dig deeper."
"So he went to Phoenix," I said, "but not to the conference?"
"You"re half right," she said. "And that"s all I"ll say on it. I like being employed."
"How do you know this information?" Marco asked.
She smiled. "I can"t tell you that. But I have it from a reliable source."
"Did you see Lori Wednesday morning?" he asked.
"Not Wednesday, no. I went to Lori"s place Tuesday morning. I"ll bet Mrs. Green told you Wednesday, didn"t she? That old busybody. She"s half off her rocker and always sticks her nose into everyone"s business."
"Every neighborhood has a Mrs. Green," I said.
Diane took another look at me. "Do we know each other?"
"Possibly. Do you ever buy flowers at Bloomers?"
Diane"s mouth dropped open. "You"re the florist who"s always helping catch criminals!"
"Not always," I said modestly. "A few times, perhaps. Well, okay, ten."
She leaned against the door and crossed her arms. "You"re such a little thing. How do you do it, and on crutches yet?"
Marco cleared his throat. He was growing impatient.
"The crutches are temporary," I said, then put my hand on Marco"s arm. "And he"s how I do it." Then I turned the floor over to my intended before he started pawing the ground.
Marco pulled out the photo of Lori. "Would you mind looking at this?"
Diane took it from him, saw what it was, and turned her head away with a grimace. "You should have warned me."
"I know it"s difficult," Marco said, "so try to look only at the clothing, see if it looks familiar."
Diane closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. Then she took a long look at the photo and handed it back. "That"s the outfit Lori was wearing Tuesday morning."
"Are you certain?" Marco asked.
"She had a matching blazer when I saw her, but it"s the same skirt and blouse. She called it her power suit. She was also wearing a shiny yellow flower pendant, kind of Art Deco style, with a white center, and matching earrings."
"What kind of flower?" I asked.
Marco glanced at me as if to say, What difference does it make? A flower is a flower.
"It wasn"t a daisy," Diane said. "It had lots of thin petals, like a dandelion."
A flower was definitely not a flower when it was a weed that a certain vampire look-alike had a thing for.
"Why did you visit Lori Tuesday morning?" Marco asked.
"To get my hibachi back," Diane said. "I leave it on my patio. Every time Lori decides she wants to grill, she takes it. But that"s how Lori is-was. Whatever she wanted, she took."
Including someone else"s promotion. Diane had just opened the gate for us. That must have been what Marco was waiting for.
"I understand you and Lori were up for the same position a few years back," Marco said.
Diane"s nostrils flared, as though the thought of it still stank. "Yeah, until she went behind my back to sabotage my chances of getting it. Then she couldn"t understand why I didn"t want to be friends anymore."
"Being stabbed in the back is hard to take," Marco said.
"I was furious for a long time," Diane said. "I went to Parkview before Lori did and helped her get hired. Then she sabotaged me. I couldn"t even stand to be in the same room with her after that. But I ended up with a position at County that I like even more-and she ended up dead-so it all worked out." She smiled wryly.
Macabre sense of humor. I liked her.
"Were you at County Hospital when the wrongful-death lawsuit was filed against Lori and the hospital by a patient named Jerry Trumble?" Marco asked.
"Sure was," Diane said.